Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

God, if You didn’t hear me the first time, thank You for this woman.

[TWO]

When they got to Das Haus im Wald they found the Merry Outlaws, less Master Sergeant C. Gregory Damon, Retired, John and Sandra Britton, and Vic D’Alessandro—whom they had left behind in Budapest to deal with the logistical and other problems of getting into Somalia on some credible excuse—sitting in an assortment of chairs and couches in the top-floor living room of the House in the Woods snacking on a massive display of cold cuts. Castillo saw that Peg-Leg Lorimer was working at his laptop.

Floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows showed fields green with new growth and what at first glance appeared to be an airfield. The Gulfstream V on which they had flown first from Cozumel to Budapest and then here was parked near a runway beside a Cessna Mustang, the smaller jet bearing German markings. There was also what looked like a deserted control tower, a four-story structure built of concrete blocks, the top floor of which was windowed on all sides.

It was not a deserted aviation control tower, however. It had been built by the hated East German Volkspolizei after the Berlin Wall had gone up to keep an eye on the fence that then had separated East from West Germany, and had run through the Gossinger property.

When the Berlin Wall—and the fence—came down, Castillo, who had been born and spent the first twelve years of his life in Das Haus im Wald as Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, and now owned the property, ordered that the guard tower be left in place as a monument to the Cold War.

Castillo went to see how Peg-Leg was coming with his SitRep, saw that he was nearly finished, and then inquired, “What time is it in Washington?”

“Peg-Leg’s finished?” Lieutenant Colonel Allan B. Naylor asked.

“How does that translate to hours and minutes?” Castillo asked.

Allan gave Charley the finger, then said, “Five minutes after ten in the morning.”

Peg-Leg pressed a button, and a printer began to whine, purr, and ultimately began to spit out printed pages.

He handed them to Castillo, who read them, then handed them to Naylor.

“Nice job, Peg-Leg,” he said.

“What happens now?” Lorimer asked.

“You get to ride to Berlin in the Mustang, where you will take these magnificent documents to the embassy for transmission. Meanwhile, Colonel Naylor and I will take Sweaty and whoever else wants to go on a tour of where we were innocent children together.

“Tomorrow, presuming the Somali experts finally get here, we will drive to Cologne, where we will board Die Stadt Köln, a five-star river cruiser which we have chartered to ensure our conversations will not be overheard by the forces of evil, and sail up and down the Rhine River for four days.”

“Wait until Lammelle gets the bill for that,” Dick Miller said.

Naylor said, “Charley, I think it would be better if I went to Berlin with Peg-Leg.”

Castillo considered that a moment, and then said, “Yeah. That’s not a shot at you, Peg-Leg. What I’m thinking is that an active duty light colonel from Central Command is liable to get more cooperation from the military attaché than some retired warrior such as you and me. And I don’t want that stuff delayed.”

[THREE]

Office of the Secretary of State

The Harry S Truman Building

2201 C Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1125 15 June 2007

The secretary of State, on occasions like this, was extremely jealous of both Truman C. Ellsworth, the director of National Intelligence, and A. Franklin Lammelle, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It had to do with their freedom of schedule and of travel.

If they wanted to go somewhere, they got in their airplanes and went. With the exception of the President, no one had the authority to ask them where they were going or why. No one had that authority vis-à-vis the secretary of State, either, but the secretary of State was a public figure, and by definition the DCI and the DNI were the opposite. No one was supposed to know what they were doing.

For most of her life, until she had become secretary of State, Natalie Cohen had really believed that lying and deception had been not only wrong but counterproductive. She had learned that from her father, an investment banker. It had attracted her to Mortimer Cohen, also the son of an investment banker, whom she had married three months after graduating from Vassar.

Two sons had quickly followed, and she had tried—and thought she had succeeded in—instilling in them the high moral principles of her father and their father. She had been, she believed, a good Jewish mother to her boys, devoting her life to them until the youngest had gone off to preparatory school. The question then became what to do with the rest of her life.

She was well schooled in economics—it had been her major in college—and she had learned a good deal more about finance, in particular international finance, from both her father and her husband.